I’ve heard rumors that the munchkins in the movie “The Wizard of Oz” went crazy either during or after filming wrapped up. Is there any truth to this rumor?
All of them? That would’ve been quite a sight, 300 insane midgets running around Los Angeles, waving their hands around and screaming.
I have no idea how many people were involved, but my source claims that there were a half dozen arrests and several were blackballed by hollywood.
No, no truth to the rumor.
I played The Wizard of Oz for the my daughter this weekend and then checked on a web site to confirm my recollection that Auntie Em commited suicide (took and overdose of sleeping pills and put a plastic bag over her head). The site also had a FAQ list and it pretty well debunked the UL of Munchkins Run Amok.
“Munchkins run amok” sounds like a variant on the “munchkin suicide visible in film” urban legend.
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I have heard stories that a few of them partied quite a bit and were a bit on the rowdy side. That’s not at all unusual (you should have seen the set of Howard the Duck when they decided to hire a real motorcycle gang called “Dykes on Bikes” to be extras in an early scene.)
The Wizard of Oz lore has embellished that quite a bit to make it sound as if they had decadent, orgiastic parties of unprecedented scale and depravity.
The shenanigans were likely about as wild and crazy as frosh week at a university, but even then it was just a noisy handful and not the whole group (they had children there after all.)
Band Name!!!
Weren’t they in My Fellow Americans, too?
In LA? I doubt anyone would’ve noticed. Hey, when someone is making their Oscar accpetance speech and thanks “all the little people,” are they refering to midgets? They get mentioned so often, I had no idea they were so essential to Hollywood.
Seriously, is “little people” actual accepted nomenclature? It sounds terribly condescending. Anyone have any first hand information about being refered to as a little person, and how they feel about it?
“Little people,” in fact, is a quite PC term. One of the major associations of short-statured people (also a PC term) is Little People of America. My understanding is that “dwarf” is also OK, but “midget” is not.
Dwarves and midgets are two entirely different things—I mean, two different physical conditions. I am also surprised that “little people” is an accepted term; it sounds like you should be patting them on the head as you say it.
I remember an interview with Judy Garland before she died when she told stories of the Singer Midgets partying hardily during the film – the same story was perpetuated in the movie “Under the Rainbow.” Is that what you meant by “went crazy”?
If you’re talking about clinical psychosis at a level disproportionate to the general population, no I hadn’t heard that.
I think the source of this one is David Niven’s “autobiography”, Bring On the Empty Horses. He had some pretty wild anecdotes about the early days of Hollywood but I think it’s accepted now that he stretched the truth a bit.
I think somebody saw Under the Rainbow and thought it was a documentary.
It’s a pretty funny movie though.
That interview consisted of one of Judy’s tall tales according to her children. As is wont to happen with tall tales, there’s probably a grain of truth to it but was embellished with every telling.